I spent last weekend visiting friends in Holland and headed home on Sunday evening from Schiphol Airport. ING has heavily branded itself throughout and the connecting ‘jetbridge’ that links the departure terminal to the aircraft was one long ad for the firm. ‘Let’s talk about your future’ exclaimed the ads, as I headed for the plane.
In 1960, an advertising agency chairman named Rosser Reeves was known as the high priest of hard sell. He wrote a very popular book titled “Reality in Advertising.” His book was translated into twenty-eight languages and was widely used as a college textbook. In many ways it was the beginning of modern-day marketing.
In the year 2000, I put the word “differentiation” in play, just as 20 years earlier I’d put the word “positioning” into the business language. It was the subject of a book I wrote entitled Differentiate or Die.
